Novels in Japanese

Kim Sok-pom: The Curious Tale of Mandogi’s Ghost Translated by Cindi Textor Columbia University Press, 2010 (114pp) Originally published in Japanese, 1970. What seems to be new entrant in the Korean literature in translation market is more complicated than it first seems. The author, Kim Sok-pom, is actually a second-generation zainichi Korean resident in Japan, […]

Looks like an interesting new book about to hit UK bookshops on 29 September, from Columbia University Press: The Curious Tale of Mandogi’s Ghost by Kim Sok-pom The Curious Tale of Mandogi’s Ghost incorporates Korean folk tales, ghost stories, and myth into a phenomenal depiction of epic tragedy. Written by a zainichi, a permanent resident […]

The Clan Records – Five Stories of Korea: The Clan Records | Seeking Life Amidst Death: The Last Day of the War | When the Hibiscus Blooms | The Remembered Shadow of the Yi Dynasty | A Crane on a Dunghill: Seoul in 1936 Kajiyama Toshiyuki, translated by Yoshiko Dykstra (University of Hawaii Press, 1995) […]

Top posts

The events calendar

Recent Micro Posts

Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of Hwang Sun-won’s birth on 26 March, 1915. Google Korea celebrated with one of their doodles, illustrating Hwang’s most well-known story, The Shower (소나기, 1959). The story was adapted as a movie by Lee Jin-mo in 1978; and Studio Meditation with Pencil is currently working on an animated version, which […] (27-Mar-15)

The Southbank Centre’s International Piano Series features some of the best known stars in the classical music world such as Maurizio Pollini and Mitsuko Uchida as well as those at an earlier stage in their musical careers. 2006 Leeds prizewinner Sunwook Kim made his first appearance in the series on 3 March 2015 in the […] (18-Mar-15)

The recent news item that the adultery was to be decriminalised in South Korea, 62 years after it was written into the criminal code, got me wondering as to why, when a country is rebuilding itself after a devastating war, would it be considered a priority to add adultery to the list of criminal offences. […] (14-Mar-15)

A while ago we noticed an article in the Korean press which suggested people in Jeju-do were unhappy about Chinese being allowed to drive rental cars on the island when on vacation. I wondered what it was that concerned them. Then, the other day, I came across this article in H’s Week in China publication, […] (13-Mar-15)

A great programme of music for piano and winds coming up this month, the Korean connection being that the ensemble includes flautist Jasmine Choi, whose Wigmore debut in 2009 impressed us a lot. An interesting venue too. Winds of Change: Vienna, St Petersburg, Paris Aspect Foundation For Music and Arts Thursday, 26 March 2015 at […] (28-Feb-15)